---------------------------------------------------------------------- `Taming Scattering Amplitudes at Tree Level' Abstract: We provide a general interpretation and a general prescription for computing the boundary term arising in the BCFW construction for on-shell scattering amplitudes at tree level and for general interactions. It allows us to build any on-shell scattering amplitude at tree level from a minimal set of hypotheses. This provides a fully S-matrix, Lagrangian-free, formulation of the tree level approximation for arbitrary theories in Minkowski space. ----------------------------------------------------------------------